Evil Dead' takes on darker tone

By Kurt Anthony Krug, Special to The Macomb Daily

Thursday, April 4, 2013

It had to happen.With story reboots the new trend in Hollywood, it was inevitable that “The Evil Dead” — Royal Oak native Sam Raimi’s 1981 cult horror classic starring his friend and fellow Royal Oaker Bruce Campbell — would be remade.

On April 5, “Evil Dead” will be released in theaters nationwide. And note “The” has been dropped from the title.

The movie amassed quite the cult following, especially when it was released on home video. Word spread about this horror flick shot on the cheap. News of the remake, however, rankled its legion of followers.

“Get over it,” said Campbell, who played Ash, a fan-favorite character and the protagonist of three films — “The Evil Dead,” “Evil Dead II” and the Hollywood-style budgeted “Army of Darkness.”

Unlike the original, “Evil Dead” has a big budget instead of the charity of family and friends that Raimi and company had to work with.

Even though this is the first “Evil Dead” movie without Raimi and Campbell at the helm, that’s not to say they’re not involved; both serve as producers. Raimi handpicked Fede Alvarez to direct “Evil Dead,” which is his first feature film (Alvarez also co-wrote the screenplay with some input from Raimi).

“I wanted (Alvarez) to be the guy to tell my ghost story to a new generation, with pristine sound and picture, on the big screen, seen for the first time as it was always meant to be,” said Raimi, who also directed the “Spider-Man” trilogy and this year’s “Oz: The Great and Powerful,” which was filmed in Pontiac and was the first movie this year to break the $100 million mark at the box office.

Alvarez, a native of Uruguay, made his mark on the film industry with his 2009 short film, “Panic Attack!” in which giant robots attack Montevideo; it appeared on YouTube. To date, this 5-minute epic has had more than 7 million hits and caught the attention of Raimi and Robert Tapert, Raimi’s producing partner and old roommate from their Michigan State University days.

The plot of “Evil Dead” is basically the same: A group of young college students go out to a cabin in the woods and discover the Necronomicron (also called the Book of the Dead), where they unwittingly unleash an army of demons (“Deadites”) that they must fight. However, the creators made some changes. For starters, the tone is much darker — it’s not campy, like the original. Most notably, Campbell’s Ash has NOT been recast, he’s been removed from the story.

The plot has a drug addict named Mia (Jane Levy, best known for portraying snarky Tessa Altman on the ABC comedy “Suburgatory”) who attempts to go cold turkey, but suffers from withdrawal symptoms. She is the first to see the demons, but her friends blow her off, dismissing her claims as hallucinations. By the time they figure out she’s not seeing things, it’s far too late.

The cast also includes Shiloh Fernandez (“Red Riding Hood”) who plays Mia’s older brother, David; Jessica Lucas (“Cloverfield”) who plays Olivia, a nurse; Lou Taylor Pucci (“Fanboys”) as Eric, a high school teacher who opens the Necronomicron and unleashes hell on Earth; and Elizabeth Blackmore (“Legend of the Seeker”), as Natalie, David’s girlfriend.

“I said, this time we’ve got to get better actors. When we made the first movie, we were completely inexperienced,” Campbell recalled. “I would now call the dialogue poor, but back then, we didn’t know the difference. We just said it with great earnestness and audiences loved it.”